


a fountain of blood in the shape of a girl

by deavors



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, i love these two and i would die for either of them, it's not all that graphic but rated just to be safe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 16:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19023343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deavors/pseuds/deavors
Summary: Helena meets Sarah. Things change.This face, this name, is different. It isn’t meaningless; the name doesn’t sit lightly in her mouth; the face doesn’t blend into all the others. Those defiantly wary eyes don’t leave Helena easily. They are burnt into her; they’re there when she shuts her own.“Sestra,” she repeats to herself in the dark. Sister. I have a sister.





	a fountain of blood in the shape of a girl

At fifteen she kills first. She is sent creeping in the deadest hour of night into the bedroom of a girl her own age—exactly precisely her own age, created in a laboratory by scientists from Helena’s own flesh. Like Adam’s rib. They stole parts of her and made babies with them, and now she must finish what was started. That is what she is told, and Helena doesn’t doubt. She hasn’t the strength to doubt. At least, not anything she isn’t _told_ to doubt.

She hovers over the bed in the inky blackness, silence a piercing ringing in her ears. In the bed is the form of a girl, rough and vaguely-shaped in the night, fast fast asleep. On the walls Helena can see things of this world—bright posters barely visible in the darkness, for bands or movies or other things that don’t really matter at all. Poor soulless copy, she’ll never know what really matters—she’s never had the chance.

The girl’s name—Jael Michlig. She turns it around like a candy in her mouth. The knife is heavy and cool in her hand, and she grips it tighter. She leans down, runs her other hand over Jael’s back, lightly and tenderly.

Helena is glad she can’t see the girl’s face. Not only is it too dark for even Helena’s sharp eyes to see through, but Jael is turned onto her side, her face pressed into the pillows. But Helena has seen pictures. Jael wears Helena’s own nose, her eyes, her mouth and cheeks and forehead. Everything. Stolen property.

Helena isn’t a killer yet, though she’s been molded carefully into the semblance of one. And she’s not sure that, if she could see the face so like her own, just now, she would be able to do what has to be done. But she can’t see the face, only a shape in the dark. So that is good.

Jael shudders, perhaps in a dream, before her breathing steadies to a slow rhythm again. Her back is warm under the blankets and under Helena’s hand. She knows nothing. Poor copy. No point in waiting any longer.

Helena brings the knife down.

She brings the knife down again. And again, until it’s done.

Half an hour later, bloody, she finds her way back to Tomas. His hand smears with red when he places it heavy on her shoulder. “Well done,” he says, and she basks in the brightness of it. She’s done God’s will. There’s nothing sweeter. With the squeeze of Tomas’s hand on her shoulder, she lets the knife clatter to the floor.

 

Names fly by, in quick succession, as the years fly by too. Janika, Aryanna, Shahinaz, Kate. They all falsely wear her face, and this makes her hate them, each one. Coldly she hates them, without any real feeling behind it. She hates them and she pities them. They have no souls, they stole her face and paid no dues for it, their existence spits at God, and their flesh parts so easily underneath her hands.

She makes short work of each one. Some are stabbed, some are shot, some are knocked dizzy and drowned in their bathtubs, some are strangled with her bare hands. It’s a form of worship. She is strong and brave enough to end all of them, and of course she has God on her side, as Tomas and Maggie are always telling her, so she can’t fail.

But Helena does not think of herself as a hero. In the night when she pays her penance, when she slips her hands behind her back and digs cold metal into her skin and steadily cuts herself a pair of angel wings she’ll never earn, she does not think of herself as a hero. Like the rest of them, she is a sinner. She’s not a soulless copy, but a sinner nonetheless. She is dirty. She makes mistakes. She pays her dues to God.

Sometimes she goes to nightclubs. Sometimes she stalks into large dark rooms filled with pulsing bodies, and she allows herself to feel the bass and beat heavy in her blood, and she dances and exalts false gods with the rest of the sinners. She likes this because it makes her feel like a living breathing human being, it makes her feel alive, present in the moment, like she _exists_ , like there is nothing else horrible in the world. She’ll slice her back double those nights, to say sorry. But it is important that Tomas doesn’t know, because Tomas will beat her, and that is one price she’s unwilling to pay.

She can keep secrets from Tomas. She’s learned that well. And sometimes it is necessary, because Tomas is even more devout than her. He keeps God and the Bible close to his chest, and there’s nothing in which he can’t find fault. Helena is always doing wrong in his eyes. Helena always needs strong fists and cages to help her understand.

Freya, Anežka, Yeva, Danielle, Naomi. Names and faces fly past. She keeps killing.

 

Helena meets Sarah. Things change.

This face, this name, is different. It isn’t meaningless; the name doesn’t sit lightly in her mouth; the face doesn’t blend into all the others. Those defiantly wary eyes don’t leave Helena easily. They are burnt into her; they’re there when she shuts her own.

“ _Sestra_ ,” she repeats to herself in the dark.

_Sister. I have a sister._

It is unthinkable, that she would ever call another woman sister. Other women who look like Helena aren’t _sisters_ , not ever. They’re bad copies, meant to be hunted down and ended in an act of mercy. Sarah, though, is not a bad copy. She has a soul. Helena can see it, can feel it, as real as the trigger of her sniper rifle under her finger.

Helena has never met this woman—not as adults, not since the womb—and yet she loves her, with a fierceness that gnaws at her. She _feels_ her, the connection between them, like an invisible cord tied around both their wrists. When she learns they were carried in the same woman’s belly—two little babies with souls, defying the devils that created them—something _clicks_ , and she believes it. She believes. For the first time, without coercion, faithfully and devoutly, Helena believes.  

Helena will not tell Tomas about this, because if Tomas knew, he would surely beat the demons out of her. But Sarah is a demon that will not leave. Not even for Tomas’s fists.

Helena cuts off tails for Sarah. She kills for Sarah. She nearly dies for Sarah. She kills for Sarah again. She returns to the belly of the beast for Sarah. She embraces their other sisters—bad copies; no, mustn’t think that, not ever again—for Sarah. She is abandoned by Sarah and found again by Sarah and crawls back to Sarah and watches Sarah crawl back to her. She crouches in a filthy dim basement, pain clamping onto her hips so hard that she cannot make a sound, and delivers two babies into Sarah’s hands.

She learns the meaning of _sestra_. She thought she knew what it meant, before. She didn’t know anything.

 _Sestra_ means you wear the other like a second skin. It means you think of her all the time. She becomes an obsession in your blood. She’s there even when you’re not thinking of her, silently pulsing, because your blood and hers belong to each other.

Helena met Sarah. Things changed.

 

Of course, even after the end, everything is not over. It never will end for them. Even after the sisters think they’ve defeated the last enemy, there will always be a higher shadow looming above them all. Sometimes, Helena laughs at the arrogance of thinking they could ever live in peace.

If they’re abominations, so be it. She’s accepted that. If God is punishing them, she has accepted that, too. She is one of them; if the others don’t have souls, neither does she. She will live and die with the rest. She is not the original. She is not the light. She has killed, again and again, every time wearing a little bit of her soul away, if you can call that shriveled thing inside her a soul, if it was ever a soul at all. And to save her sisters and bring them a semblance of peace, she’ll kill every last person on Earth who isn’t them.

Helena finds herself locked in a cage, in a dark room, too similar to Tomas’s makeshift dungeons. She rattles the bars. She gnashes and bares her teeth. She screams and howls like an animal. If she gets free, they’ll wish they had never seen her face.

Who kidnapped her? The remnants of DYAD, of Brightborn, of Neolution? Minions of Rachel? Someone else from the old days, wanting revenge? God knows Helena and her sisters have made enough people angry. She doesn’t remember exactly who she’s fighting. They all blend together.

Surely, within a few hours, a doctor in a white coat will enter the room, blind her by flicking the lights on, and try to force a syringe into her skin. That’s how it always goes. She is fiercely tired of being an experiment. She has been a brood mare, a soulless copy, a huntress, a thing to be studied, all because other people forced it on her. (Sarah sometimes laughs, with hard eyes, and calls them lab rats. Sarah sometimes gets drunk, and only then can Helena see all the anger in her, the remains of what has happened to them. Sarah sometimes. Sarah.)

Helena is tired. She wants it to end.

She supposes, like always, the only way to fix things is to kill.

The scientist in the white coat never arrives. Sarah arrives. Sarah is the one who appears in the doorway, flicks the light on, blinds Helena. But Helena’s sure that even if her sister hadn’t turned on the lights, Helena would have been blinded anyway.

She is holding a gun in her left hand. There is a knife tucked, haphazard, in her belt; the hilt is stained with bloody fingerprints. More blood, all over; Sarah is covered in the stuff. Her eyes are wild, she’s breathing hard. There are blotches all down her leather jacket, on the front of her shirt, down her jeans, dark wet. Her brown hair is matted. She fought her way here. She killed. (When will they be allowed to stop killing?)

She killed for Helena. For Helena. Helena almost melts at the bloody sight of her: once a little boy looked up at Helena and asked if she was an angel, and Helena feels like that little boy right now, and wants to ask the same of Sarah. Is Sarah hurt? If Sarah is hurt, Helena will—she will—she doesn’t know.

She searches for words. She just stares. The bars are cold under her hands.

Sarah stands in the doorway. Sarah breathes hard. Sarah runs to her.

“Are you—are you okay? Oh my god, Helena, I thought—they said—” Sarah is thrusting her arms through the bars of the cage, and they’re snaking around Helena’s back, pulling her close. The bars hurt pressed against Helena’s cheek and chest; she’s never cared less about anything. Sarah’s forehead against her own; the metal cool against them both.

“I was going to pick the lock,” Helena says shakily. “But you got here first.”

(It’s not true. She would never have gotten free. She just wants Sarah to feel better.)

“They said you were dead.” Sarah sounds on the verge of tears. “Jesus fucking Christ, Helena, they told me they’d killed you, and I saw a body, and—”

“A body? What body?”                                                                

“Some other clone, I dunno—I have no idea what their game is. But I—I thought I’d lost you.”

“And so,” Helena says, “you killed them?”

“I killed them all.”

Helena understands. “I would have done the same, _sestra_. If they had killed you I would have plucked out all their teeth and fed them to them.” She opens her mouth, yanks on an incisor to demonstrate.

Sarah nervously giggles. What a time to giggle. But, again, Helena understands.

“We have to get outta here—I’ve got the key.” Helena watches as Sarah steps back, scans the cage for a lock, growls when she can’t find it immediately. Then she does find it. The key finds its way out of Sarah’s pocket and into her hand. She nearly drops it in her urgency to shove it into the lock, fumbles it, half-screams in frustration. All the while Helena watches her. Sarah has the brightness of the sun.

Helena remembers Jael, her first kill. She remembers the guilt she’d felt, the gratefulness that she couldn’t see Jael’s face in the dark. Now she can’t stop looking at Sarah. Sarah, who wears her face, who’s saved her life a thousand times, whose life Helena’s saved, on purpose, because she wanted to. Sarah, a clone that loves her, a clone who Helena loves. Ten years ago, five years ago, not so long ago, all this was unthinkable. All this was blasphemy. All this was a dream.

Jael’s blood on her hands. All the others’ blood on her hands. The blood of anyone who’d try and hurt Sarah or Alison or Cosima: on her hands too.

Now, because she held Sarah through the bars: the blood of people Sarah killed to get to her, on Helena’s hands too.

She wishes neither of them had to kill anyone to find peace; she wishes peace wasn’t a stupid dream. But wishing’s for children, and Sarah has killed men to reach her sister, and that, in its own way, is good.

Sarah gets the key open, and the door of the cage swings open, and Helena half-crawls out. Sarah’s hand clamps around her arm.

“Come on, meathead.”

“Do not call me this,” she rasps, and follows Sarah. But she doesn’t mean it. If Sarah called her nothing but _meathead_ for the rest of her life, well, that would just become her name.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading this messy ramble. I hope you kinda enjoyed.
> 
> (also: I haven't read the comics, so I don't know if any of this is inaccurate to them - sorry if so)


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